Feds bring K-9 security team to Orlando

Transportation security team unleashed

June 26, 2009|By Anika Myers Palm, Sentinel Staff Writer

Shanka sniffed around, under and inside a Lynx bus Thursday, finally sitting down when she smelled the planted scent of an explosive. In return, the 3-year-old Belgian Malinois received a treat from transportation security inspector Phil Eastberg. "Good girl!" he said, petting her.

The demonstration at the Lynx bus terminal in downtown Orlando was the federal government's way of announcing that Orlando now has an elite K-9 team run by the Transportation Security Administration.

Orlando is the second city in Florida -- Miami was first -- to receive the dogs as part of VIPR, or Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, teams. The goal is to help improve the TSA's ability to detect explosives at Orlando International Airport and be on call for disturbances at other facilities in the area, including bus stations.

Each team includes a dog and a canine handler. The dogs are the stars of the teams: Liza, a 3-year-old German shepherd; Drotoy, a 5-year-old Hungarian wirehaired Vizsla; and Shanka. Training for the dogs generally lasts about a year, but Drotoy's lessons took two years because she became a mother during her training; one of her pups went through training with her.

The dogs primarily will be used to inspect cargo for passenger-carrying planes at the airport, but they also can be deployed anytime at the request of local law enforcement, said John Daly, Orlando-based federal security director for the TSA. Canine teams have been available in the past, but these will be specific to Orlando and more flexible in their availability and ability to quickly work with transit agencies.

VIPR teams from the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies work with local law enforcement to improve mass transit, aviation, maritime and rail security.

Nationally, VIPR has been involved in about 1,000 operations in the past two years.

Daly declined to predict how often the dogs might be deployed in Central Florida.